Sunday, September 4, 2016

Once upon a time China had a one-child policy. By government
edict couples were only allowed to have one offspring. The policy was designed
to solve the problem of overpopulation. And also the problem of mass starvation
and poverty.

Apparently, the policy has worked so well that, as of last
year, it was being changed to a two-child policy.

Europe, and not just Europe, is facing a different problem.
Underpopulation. Young Europeans are not reproducing at a sufficiently high
rate to maintain the population. They are reproducing below what is called the
replacement rate. Over time this means that ethnic Europeans will die out and
their nations will be taken over by peoples who are reproducing at much higher
rates.

The
average fertility rate in the EU was 2.4 children per woman in 1970, but
dropped to 1.5 in 2013, according to the OECD. The OECD says a rate of 2.1 is
required to ensure a stable population, so rates below this are bad for
countries with aging populations, generous social services, and sclerotic
economies. (In other words, for Italy.)

And Jonathan Last explained it this way:

The fertility rate is the number of children an
average woman bears over the course of her life. The replacement rate is 2.1.
If the average woman has more children than that, population grows. Fewer, and
it contracts. Today, America's total fertility rate is 1.93, according to the
latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; it hasn't
been above the replacement rate in a sustained way since the early 1970s.

The nation's falling fertility rate underlies
many of our most difficult problems. Once a country's fertility rate falls
consistently below replacement, its age profile begins to shift. You get more
old people than young people. And eventually, as the bloated cohort of old
people dies off, population begins to contract. This dual problem—a population
that is disproportionately old and shrinking overall—has enormous economic,
political and cultural consequences.

When fewer young people pay into the social welfare system a
nation might need to import young people from the outside. Otherwise the system
will go bust or the elderly will see their benefits cut. Of course, this requires refugees to go to work and to earn their
way. If refugees go on welfare, it compounds the problem.

In Italy, the Health Minister recently tried to solve the
problem by declaring something she called a “Fertility Day.” She might have
used the old standby—“be fruitful and multiply”—but she did not. Whereas the
Biblical injunction was addressed to a couple, the Italian Health Minister
addressed herself to women, in particular to women who had been postponing
marriage and family. Similar programs had been known some success in Denmark
and Russia.

It sounds absurd to proclaim a national day celebrating
procreative sexuality, but, like it or not, it has come to this. Of course, the
Minister notwithstanding, it is not merely a woman’s problem.

The
Italian Ministry of Health is in hot water after launching a campaign for a
Fertility Day, which is exactly what it sounds like.

The
country, which faces a declining birth rate that’s putting its economy in
danger, is urging anyone who can make a baby to do so on Sept. 22. “Fertility
is a common good,” the campaign urges.

The outcry was swift and vehement. How dare the health
minister remind women of their biological clocks?

The New York Post continues:

The
Ministry has since removed the initiative’s Web site (fertilityday2016.it), but
the bizarre and even offensive images created for the campaign live on. One ad
urges, “Beauty knows no age. Fertility does.” Another reads: “Young parents.
The best way to be creative.” With the unemployment rate at 42 percent for
Italians ages of 15 to 24, writer
Giulia Blasi points out that there may be better ways to get creative
than popping out a kid you can’t afford. She argues that Italy’s efforts would
be better spent making it easier for women to balance motherhood and work.

As one might expect many feminists want the government to
solve the problem. But, then again, if the problem reflects a stagnant economy
and an absurdly high youth unemployment rate, then perhaps free market reforms will be more effective.

Think about this: how many young Italian men are sufficiently solvent to want
to marry and start a family? Rumor has it that many young Italian men are still
living at home, cared for by mothers who are perfectly happy to feed them, to
clean up after them and to do their laundry. Why trade that in for diaper duty
and Mr. Mom?

One imagines that the problem has something to do with the
fact that pregnancy has become the modern version of what used to be called “the
curse.” For many feminists pregnancy has become a patriarchal plot designed to
keep women chained to their homes and out of the workforce.

And yet, the problem of a low replacement rate extends to
places like Iran and Japan and Russia… so it is difficult to pin it entirely on
Western feminism.

Certainly, a stagnant economy demoralizes the population and
produces a generalized feeling of depression.
As we know, this condition causes diminished libido.

And, in our modern age, procreation does not seem
quite as urgent as it once did. Low infantile mortality rates and increased
longevity have made it easier to defer and delay having children. Not too long
ago people did not have a very long lifespan. High infantile mortality rates induced
people to have more children. If you expect that some of your children will not
live past childhood, you are more likely to want to have more children. If you
expect that your male children will be sent off to war you are more likely to
want to have more children. If you have a shorter lifespan you will be more
likely to want to start having children earlier.

Also, if governments do not provide pension programs you are
more likely to have more children… to take care of you in your old age.

And yet, reason, many young men are no
longer capable of supporting families. Among the better educated this has
produced a declining marriage rate and declining fertility. It is the
responsible thing to do. But, the less educated and the less talented
continue to reproduce at higher numbers.

Feminists believe that it will all be solved once we have
more government policies that protect a woman’s right to be a working mother. Yet,
what if women and men are on the same page. What if women are balking about
having children because they do not want to work and be mothers at the same
time? What if women would prefer to have the option of staying home with their
children?

Men who are no longer breadwinners do not want to take on
responsibilities they cannot meet. And women who cannot find husbands who can
support them also do not want to take on responsibilities they cannot meet as
they would wish.

6 comments:

--> "Today, America's total fertility rate is 1.93, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; it hasn't been above the replacement rate in a sustained way since the early 1970s."

The data available is amazing, but also deceptive in ways.

Like the U.S. fertility rate has hovered just around 2.0 or slightly below since the 1970s but the U.S. population has risen from 205 to 320 million people, or about a 1% increase per year. I've read somewhere about half of that is from immigration, but how can a below 2 fertility rate add the rest?

Meanwhile China's population from 1978 to 2015 increased from 956 million to 1.371 billion, also a 1% growth rate per year. Their fertility rate bottomed at 1.5 in 2000, so the one-child policy clearly had exceptions or penalties that didn't stop too many. On the other hand, underground female abortion or infanticide is the only way to explain the male-female ratios, and now males have extra high pressure to compete for status to win the hearts and minds of the smaller numbers of women.

And democratic India is still in a higher growth period, but decreasing from 6 children per woman in 1960 to 2.5 children now, increasing from 449 million people in 1960 to 1.270 billion in 2015, averaging a 1.9% growth rate.

And if you look at a map, Africa is where the birth rates are still sky high, with only Afghanistan above 5 per woman outside Africa.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

We can wonder where future immigrants will come from and you can see Mexico and western south American countries seem to be the domains for the surplus populations in the Americas, and many will be heading north to opportunity, however high Trump's wall is built.

I think its fair to say immigrants are generally hard workers, although surely crime is involved also in some of the underground migrations and trade, so they can keep our drug users supplied in their illegal activities.

Why would any young man today want to sign on to the absolute worst civil contract in America?

Look at the news aggregators. Article after article advising men how to listen to women, give them orgasms, do more work, become better "mommies" for their children, all while being ridiculed as overgrown, patronizing, monotasking, emotionally crippled, fat buffoons who "manspread" on the subway. If a man does sign on the bottom line and father children, he's at risk in a wildly gynophilic legal system for losing a chunk of his income, as well as half or more of his estate for no better reason than the womyn wants to focus on her "personal growth" or "authenticity".

Every man considering marriage should pay for a personal premarital consultation with a divorce lawyer.

No nation seems to have managed to educate its women without getting on a path to extinction. Yes, immigration can help from an economic point of view, but if over a couple of generations all the italians are replaced with africans, then it won't really be italy any more.

When we have identity politics on such a massive and emotionally-unhinged scale, the message is that "reproductive health" is abortion. Yet abortion is not healthy, it is abortive... it terminates a perfectly healthy reproductive process that is underway.

We have declared women have a right to privacy, yet sexual relations today are much less private, and men have absolutely no say in the outcome of a pregnancy their contribution made possible. That's a lot of female power, portrayed as the dark curse of gestation (yet, definition ally, freely chosen)and motherhood. How odd. Yet she guarantees fatherhood as well. If the woman chooses to carry the child to term, the man is financially responsible, and has no say. Even if he wasn't the father. Curious. Sounds like the courts are saying men are contributors, protectors and providers. Yet we're told that's anachronistic. Bizarre, no?

We are daily immersed in a culture of sexual voyeurism, encouraging pleasure and experimentation, which results in "unwanted" pregnancies. "Unplanned" is the better descriptor, but where is responsibility here? All people are talking about here is statistical population replacement rate of birth vs. death. Here's a st artistic: Every year we have an abundance of children that can be carried to term and contribute to our civilization, but we abort them because we can't guarantee they'll be born to a perfect family like the (fictional) Huxtables. And if dad isn't an OB/GYN and mom isn't a lawyer, then those kids are doomed, aren't they? And enough with the phony "rape and life of the mother" exemption concerns. Most women are not brutally and violently raped like Dr. Melfi in "The Sopranos," and living through childbirth has never been more likely.

So what's all this really about? I'm sure Chinese families are thrilled at the thought of more offspring, while American white upper middle class young people seek to delay adulthood indefinitely, until it is more convenient... as if biology has pause, undo, or "save until later" buttons. Do newborns care about their parents' age?

Pardon me if I seem antiquated, but I don't see when this mysterious "planned" pregnancy is to take place, save steering clear of James Q. Wilson's "Poverty Formula." Wise, thoughtful people seem to be in short supply these days... they're so fuddy-duddy. They would have so much more fun if they were sterilized so they could have more inconsequential recreational orgasms. Fun!

Feminists have stolen the "reproductive health"conversation, and now we more often hear that it comes up too late for the really cool kids who make lots of money in their 20s and 30s. After all, we know how much adults women just love to live the single scene, with no desire for an eligible male who willmake a commitment to them. Yucky! Yeah, in the age of Burning Man, that stuff is just bullshit. Let's just #%$& and get it over with... there's a whole world of experiences out there. Whoa, man. Far out. Gnarly. Awesome. Word. Boom.

I doubt Steve Jobs would've been born today. Would the world have been better without him? Would it be what it is today without his influence? He was born to unwed parents in an impossible cultural circumstance, and became the only child of his adoptive parents. What might we do or recommend to his birth parents today? I suspect most would encourage Joanne Schiebele to follow her bliss and abort. After all, Colorado was the first state to decriminalize abortion... in 1967. And how might the Huxtables have fared back in those good ol' days?

We live in a very strange culture, where people are willing to make bold pronouncements about every issue, save the perpetuation of human existence... unless it involves fewer human beings. Not their children, of course, conceived and delivered into the world at the right time. After all, they planned ahead.

And the Skelton that hides in the closet of much of this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/17/eugenics-skeleton-rattles-loudest-closet-left?CMP=share_btn_fbI am suggesting that the more educated, not necessarily more intelligent, woman would be more predisposed to believe in the goals of eugenics sans the name. Much of feminism is founded on Sanger and abortion of the unwanted or un needed. Is there any doubt that the feminists would run a Sanger for president if they could? Oh wait............. The verbiage may be different, but the underlying ideas are the same. Your comment on Steve Jobs is especially prescient.

Paul Mclellan,

One should not be surprised that many on the Left utilize this concept in hopes of removing the unwanted population. feminism, environmentalism, eugenics by whatever name, et al fit together nicely to create Social Darwinism.

I suspect it might be unintended, but extinction is one of the outcomes. The less different we are the easier it is for disease to run rampant through a population.

There must be a rule that states that the smart one thinks they are the "dumber" they really are.